The Grateful Dead Clubhouse Projects

The Best Of Turn On Your Love Light

Turn On Your Love Light

Lyrics: Scott/Malone
Music: Scott/Malone

Without a warning, you broke my heart
Taken it baby, tore it apart
And you left me standing, in a dark clime
Said your love for me was dyin'
So come on baby, baby please
I'm begging you baby, I'm on my knees
Turn on your light, let it shine on me
Turn on your love light, let it shine on me
Let it shine, let it shine, let it ...

Well I get a little lonely in the middle of the night
And I need you darling to make things all right
So come on baby, baby please
And I'm begging you baby, 'cause I'm on my knees
Turn on your light, let it shine on me
Turn on your love light, let it shine on me
Let it shine, let it shine, let it ...

Without a warning, you broke my heart
Taken it baby, torn it apart
And you left me standing, in a dark clime
Said your love for me was dyin'
So come on baby, baby please
I'm begging you baby, I'm on my knees
Turn on your light, let it shine on me
Turn on your love light, let it shine on me
Let it shine, let it shine, let it ...

Well I get a little lonely in the middle of the night
And I need you baby to make things all right
So come on baby, baby please
And I'm begging you baby, 'cause I'm on my knees
Turn on your light, let it shine on me
Turn on your love light, let it shine on me

[starts getting more ad-lib from here: this is the Live/Dead version:]

Let it shine on me, let it shine on me
Let it shine on me, let it shine on me
Why don't you let it, shine on me
Why don't you let it baby, shine on me
Early in the morning, let it shine on me
Late in the evening, let it shine on me too
Well that's all I need, I just got to get some
That's all I need, I just got to get some
I just got to, I just to
Get a little more, yes I do
And I don't want it all, I just want a little bit
I don't want it all, no no no no, I just want a little bit
A little of your lovin', a little of your kissin'
A little of your rollin', that's all I want
Baby please, baby please
Baby please, baby please
Just like a stringray, on a four day ride
Now wait a minute, I wanna to tell you about my baby
I wanna tell you how come she make me feel so good
Yes she do, yes she do
I know she make me feel all right, yes she do

She's got box-back nitties
And great big noble thighs
Working undercover with a boar hog's eye

[etc - including, famously]
Take your hands out of your pockets and turn on your lovelight

STANDARD DISCLAIMER:
The Best Versions Project differs from the lists in the GD Taper's Compendium in what Ribot_for_President calls "good taste and common sense." This project isn't necessarily definitive (well, it kinda is to us), and it’s not an invitation to debate. It’s a list of solid versions that you all ought to hear.

No one seems to know where Pigpen got these lines from. The 1993 Golden Road Annual quotes Garcia:

"He (Pigpen) loved Lord Buckley, and W.C. Fields was another of his faves. But I don't see that influence much in the music; more in him as a guy. I have no idea where he picked up most of that stuff. Some of it was bits and pieces of lyrics from old tunes that he'd pick up and then he'd extrapolate. But, like, I have no idea where he got that thing he used to sing: 'She got box back nitties and great big noble thighs, working undercover with a boar hog's eye.' Don't ask me--I don't know what the fuck that's all about! It's some weird mojo shit or something. But he could always pull that stuff out. He could do that as long as I knew him. When he was on, he was amazing."

The following post explains a bit more:

"Box back nitties are those long flannel underwear with the flap in the back for, well, you know :) For an example, see Michael Landon in Little House On The Prairie."

The following post from Rand Hutcheson explains more about "boar hog's eye":

"A search for that phrase on Google doesn't turn up much, but it does turn up a review of a Kate Lissauer disc, and the review has some discussion of the phrase 'boar hog's eye.' The only helpful bit is a quotation from Lissauer herself, who notes that 'I got a girl, she's got something like a boar hog's eye' is a standard blues line. The remainder of the discussion, quoting sources going back to 1910 is, it seems to me, wrong, and the suggestion that 'hog's eye' equals "hoagie" (a term they still use in Philadelphia for a sandwich on French bread) and is a metaphorical term for 'penis' is badly wrong ('I got a girl, she got a penis'? What!?)

The correct solution is just the reverse. The use of the word eye to refer to the female pudendum is ancient. There is a riddle in the Exeter Book, a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon poetic codex, which I translate thus:

Riddle 25
'I am a wondrous thing, a comfort to women, helpful to neighbors; I harm no city-dwellers, except my killer alone. My stem is stiff, I stand in bed, and am hairy down below. Sometimes a pretty free-mans daughter dares, stout-hearted maid, to get a grip on me, rushes upon me in my redness, ravages my head, confines me in a tight place. She will soon feel my encounter, she who forced me in, woman with braided locks. Wet will be her eye!'

The answer to the riddle is 'an onion,' but with an obvious double entendre, which is carried through in the final sentence to the corresponding body part of the woman who grips it and confines it in a tight place.

Probably the best known example of this use of the word eye occurs in Chaucer's Miller's tale, where the poet, summing up the story, says: 'And Absolon hath kissed her nether eye.'

So there is a well-established tradition in English for eye='female pudendum.' As for a boar-hog's eye, I'm not particularly familiar with boar's eyes, so I can't say whether they have some special feature that makes them particularly appropriate in this context, other than that they are, well . . . hairy."

Here are couple of examples of "boar hog's eye" in old blues songs - with a lot of similarities to what Pigpen sings.

Geeshie Wiley, "Skinny Leg Blues":
I got little bitty legs, gee, but below those thighs
I got little bitty legs, gee, but below those thighs
Ah, gee, but below those thighs
I got something underneath and it works like a bo' hog's eye

Based on the show notes, it seems that 6/18/69 is mislabeled and actually is 2/19/69